Those fortunate few diners who manage to wrangle reservations at Spain’s famed El Bulli go home with a wallet that is significantly lighter, but there is another gift with purchase they don’t tell you about. Joy, also known as the Restaurant Whore, made the El Bulli pilgrimage and is dishing out the down-and-dirty truth on her blog. And that truth, according to Joy, is that “you feel like total shit the day after eating at El Bulli.”
You might think it a mere hangover, but Joy and her husband didn’t drink much that night. They got a decent amount of sleep. What could have caused their feelings of ill health?
Our assessment? The body was not designed to ingest that many chemicals in one meal. I remember the drive back to Barcelona, roundabout after fucking roundabout, being filled with burps that tasted like we’d quenched our thirst at a toxic spill. Stomachs distended, our conversation on the road to the airport consisted mostly of us saying ‘Wow, I feel like crap,’ ‘Yeah, me too.’ Repeat.
Would Joy return to El Bulli, chemical hangover notwithstanding? She answers in true Restaurant Whore fashion: “Fuck, yeah. … It was the experience of a lifetime.”
reminds me of my food orgy at Per Se. Same conversation on the way home! And the best meal I’ve ever had.
Just like any number of Yankie tourists I see here in Paris- they insist on booking multiple back to back Michelin three-stars, then have one meal, and get “crise de foie” (ie “liver crisis”), and end up eating salads for the rest of their stay!
That is halarious and totally true! The day after El Bulli I tried to go for a nice run and then a swim…. then i went home and threw up for the next 2 days. I dont think the body can deal with that many f*’d up things especially when you try to speed up the digestion by running in the hot sun! and like the whore, would i go back????
HELL YEAH
personally, neither i nor the other 5 people in my group had a problem when we went in september this year. the burps on the way back to our place in cadaques were interesting, but no one threw up.
and to blame the chemicals at el bulli for causing you to throw up seems a misplaced. there are many, many more chemicals in our “normal” diet than you would think. unless you’re eating completely organic and preservative-free foods and forgoing almost all processed foods from everyday grocery stores, you ARE eating chemicals. many of them.
the only problem we had the next day was trying to remember the 30 or so dishes we had the previous night and then trying to figure out what to eat for lunch.
I think Adrian hit the nail on the head. Most gastro tourists come to Spain and completely overdo it. We didn’t have any of the side effects mentioned, but El Bulli was the only big meal that we had all month…. Reading some of the eating itineraries of travelers on this site turns my stomach. Some pack more blowout meals into a week that someone here would eat all year long.
Believe me, I know, I’m in the business. I see this time and again. The funny thing is, I’m the restaurant expert here in Paris. I advise people correctly. BUT THEY DON’T LISTEN! Because their “friends” or famous chef told them to do this or that. They find out eventually, and I wish I was there to see THEM worshipping the porcelan God!
Joy went to El Bulli in 2005 and that was the season of the spheres. They’d just discovered them in 2004 when I staged there and by the next year they were all the rage. You can see them all over the menu she had. One of the key ingredients is calcium chloride – also used as road salt. When I tested El Bulli’s Texturas line for my GEAR column here I was tasting it for a while too. They are great quality products but in excess this can happen. Personally I think it may have been the added olives course they insisted on having that did them in. ;)
Poor Adrian, culinary Cassandra syndrome isn’t it? :)
Ha! Bet she had “spheres” popping out all over the place!
Didn’t have any problems at all… other than still being hungry when we left! Would do it again in a heartbeat, though.
I haven’t been to El Bulli, although I hope to someday. I sure wish the blogger could have written the trip and restaurant review without dropping so many f-bombs. I can swear like a sailor, but she really diluted her story with all the effing this and effing that and eff yes and eff no. I get the feeling I wouldn’t want to sit next to her at a restaurant, even though the story would have been a great read if it hadn’t been for the endless vulgarities.
Yeah, I know her response to me would be “Fuck you, asshole!”. Guess she’d show me who’s boss….
I’d blame my post-el Bulli hangover on the cheap bottle of cava comped by the hotel in Roses. When the four of us got back all euphoric and tipsy, there was the cava on ice, and we were stupidly thinking, “Why not?”
http://imoralist.blogspot.com/2008/07/dinner-at-el-bulli-experience-part-2-of.html